When I first 'learned' chess, it was just the moves of each piece and then I started playing. I had no plan at all other than just moving pieces and trying to take from my opponent and protecting myself from losing pieces so in a way it was the shortest of short sighted play.
I never thought about the centre of the board or piece development or openings but now, I've seen videos and books etc that talk about these things extensively.
My question: Is it dishonest to start out playing serious chess by learning from books and such instead of coming up with a lot of this stuff independently at first?
To clarify:
I'm concerned that I should have independently realized that the centre of the board is the most important and that certain moves are good because they open the way for other pieces and some moves are bad because they block other pieces etc.
I'm also wondering if I should have independently been able to come up with things like Queen's gambit accepted/declined or the Sicilian defense etc.
I suppose I don't want to cheat myself and I also don't want to 'beat' others by regurgitation.
It's for this same reason I never looked at Rubik's cube algorithms online because I know for a fact that many of these super solvers of the cube just do it by playing around. I won't let myself solve a cube by a recipe.